Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture

The kit that helps the seed supply chain serve smallholders better How can smallholders get better seeds? There’s much need for improvement! The public sector breeds lots of new varieties, but many never reach farmers. As a result, their yields and incomes stay much lower than they could be. In Africa and Asia, coordinating everybody’s efforts is a big part of the answer. Numerous activities are required all along the value chain. They’re spread across public and private sector organizations that need to work and make decisions together. Launching a new variety needs careful planning and involves lots of different stakeholders. Traditionally, the combination of public research and private seed system has often left roles and tasks less well defined than they should be. That’s where our new toolkit comes in: https://lnkd.in/em2TqdgA “The Syngenta Foundation created the Improved Variety Commercialization Toolkit to strengthen the seed supply chain”, says our Nathalie Vignaux. She and the team* have been preparing the new service since 2020. (Yes, improving seeds access is challenging!) “The tools cover all the necessary steps and activities to bring smallholders the varieties they need and want”, Nathalie adds. PurpleZone in India built and now hosts the platform. What does it cover? Market analysis, production, marketing, commercial, and legal aspects, for example. “The toolkit follows the product life cycle process in 12 stages that form four phases”, explains our Seeds2B head Tony Gathungu. “Those phases start by defining the problem, and then design, create and deliver the solution.” Seeds2B aims to roll the toolkit out further. As the words “tool” and “kit” suggest, this guide isn’t academic. It’s very practical. “We based it on the cumulative knowledge gained by the Foundation and its partners over many years”, emphasizes Sseds2B’s Camille RENOU. “The toolkit draws on a wealth of experience, education and projects in private and public organizations.” True to the topic of better access, anybody who needs the toolkit can sign up for free. Public demos continue, for example at the Africa Food Systems Forum. This year, the platform is financed through our PASTTA project with USAID. We are currently working on a longer-term solution. But Nathalie Vignaux is already convinced: “Our toolkit will ensure that more smallholders reliably get varieties that improve their income and make their farms more resilient to climate change.” How many new websites can claim to be that valuable? *As well as Nathalie Vignaux , Tony Gathungu and Camille RENOU , the other main toolkit team members were Herve THIEBLEMONT, Dantapuram Raghavender and Sophie SINELLE.

Still hacking away at the notion of climate-smart agriculture? Our Foundation is one of many organizations that work hard on the topic. But what is “CSA”, anyway? And how do you know how to do it? Views differ. Some people see it as a (farm) building with three pillars. These are Mitigation, Resilience, and Production. A perfect CSA initiative would be brilliant at all three. But as with other trios in life, there are trade-offs. A classic is “productivity & adaptation vs mitigation”. So how does one decide what’s best? Conor Walsh and colleagues at Greenwich University (UK) set out to help. (To be more precise: www.nri.org/). They teamed up with present and former members of our Foundation*. The result is a decision-making tool. (Which they wisely tested at workshops in Bangladesh & Kenya). You can read all about it in the latest edition of “Agricultural Systems”. Here’s a link: https://lnkd.in/eQyDyvS7. The tool tells you how projects perform across those three CSA pillars. It does so by assessing five “outcome pathways”. (Ein bisschen Jargon muss sein, as we say in Basel). And the authors’ advice? Don’t get bogged down in one-offs. Think more broadly. Or in the words of the Agricultural Systems paper: “CSA is arguably more achievable when viewed in terms of a portfolio of activities which can collectively compensate for the limitations of a single project.” *https://lnkd.in/ejKMwuJi & https://lnkd.in/ebCgQChS & https://lnkd.in/eTNyTrBr & https://lnkd.in/eY3tNttp . The university is https://lnkd.in/eNMKzXWz.

We're looking forward to a great discussion tomorrow (July 11) about World Vision's new Resilience Framework. Our Simon Winter is a keynote speaker. He's passionate about the potential for multi-sector initiatives to help the world's most exposed and vulnerable people and communities, especially #smallholders, become more #resilient to the world's toughest challenges like #climatechange. During this event, World Vision will release five publications exploring the intersection of resilience and systems from a range of perspectives. Here's where to sign up: https://lnkd.in/eWWbArvq

The horticultural plantation was started in 2020, aimed to create livelihood opportunities and carbon credit income for smallholder farmers. After four years, it is time to ensure the integrity and quality of the VERRA registered. The third-party audit will validate and verify the quality and methodology of carbon offset for the last couple of years. It needs an inclusivity approach to enhance smallholder farmers' resilience against climate shocks. Not only input, on-farm, and output markets, but there are huge untapped areas for carbon credit in Bangladesh like climate risk insurance. We need to create more climate-friendly income opportunities for farmers so that they can get more confidence in agriculture. Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture Varaha Carbon Check (India) Private Limited #climatechange #carboncredit #climateriskinsurance

Discover the innovative TAP5 project with Hugo Campos, focusing on commercial breeding 🌱 for tropical potatoes. By developing high-yield, disease-resistant varieties that meet market demands, TAP5 is revolutionizing sustainable farming practices. 🔸 HZPC 🔸 Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture

North Central Nigerian farmers, this is for you! Syngenta Foundation Nigeria's launched the #AVISA Farmers' Hub in Murya Community. It's basically a one-stop shop for everything you need to level up your farm.🌱 Think seeds, fertilizer, training, equipment leasing, and even financing! 🚜 This could be a game-changer for smallholders, helping you transition to commercial farming and boost yields. Plus, experts are on board, seeing AVISA as a key player in boosting regional food security. #AVISA #FarmersHub #Nigeria #DrylandCrops Learn more👉 https://bit.ly/3X7OZ3Z

This year's #WorldFoodSafetyDay theme is “Prepare for the unexpected”. Recent severe #flooding in Busia and Bungoma counties demonstrates the relevance of today's theme, as it has compromised food safety. As well as causing widespread loss of life and property, the flooding hit farmers hard in several ways. #NICEnutrition Project Food Safety Training gives farmers essential knowledge of best practices regarding all, production, resilience and food safety. One key aspect of the current situation is protecting vegetables from water damage. NICE supports farmers with appropriate storage and guides them on avoiding contamination. E.g. to stop waterborne diseases spreading, farmers now know that they must quickly remove any damaged vegetables 🌿 . Keeping food safe is a collective responsibility. World Food System Center, ETH Zurich | Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute | Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation | Sight and Life

This is the output of a collaboration between the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture and the University of Greenwich to develop a decision-support system for the context-specific design of #climate-smart agriculture projects. In agricultural development, we often have a hammer ready (organic farming, GM crops, you name it) and all we see is nails...but by better understanding the context of a farming system, we may realise that the solution might be elsewhere... Thanks to Swiss Forum for International Agricultural Research (SFIAR) for hosting! https://lnkd.in/e_d2Xpfw

We are very honoured to be one of the partners for the Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy (MADE) Alliance: Africa launched today by US VP #KamalaHarris and coordinated by Mastercard and African Development Bank Group. Our African team will support 2 million farmers in Kenya and Nigeria to benefit from improved first mile access through agri-entrepreneurs (AEs) running #FarmersHubs. The AEs will directly support pre-commercial smallholders, leveraging digital tools and infrastructure to do so cost effectively, with high transparency and impact. OK so this is an announcement. Many such announcements have been made before and not delivered on their promises. Why believe this one now? We have done this before.  In India in 2019, we worked with around 2,500 AEs serving ~150,000 farmers. Today in India, our supported The Agri-Entrepreneur Growth Foundation (AEGF) works with 20,000 AE’s, more than half of whom are women, supporting around 1.6 million smallholders. Today, our teams in Kenya and Nigeria are working with #FarmersHubs supporting close to 250,000 smallholders. To get from there to 2 million producers over 5 years seems doable. More so given ongoing technology advances, continuous improvement in tools, methods, and the lessons we keep learning. But, why do we need the AEs? Can’t digital services support farmers directly and most cost-effectively? Our experience shows it is easy for digital providers to enroll low-income producers, but not to build scalable businesses with vulnerable smallholders as their customers or suppliers. Transforming such farms to be more productive, diverse and resilient (including improving soil health, and adapting to climate change), requires a person trained to provide real-time advice, services and market access in the local context. And especially for women entrepreneurs and farmers, the digital only route can be exclusionary. This is what the AEs offer, supported by professional mentors. What else is needed? Our teams are not doing this alone. In India, we have dozens of public, private, philanthropic and community partners who have been part of the scaling journey. We will work with the MADE Alliance to build such a web of complementary partners.   If you are a company looking to source from or service Nigerian or Kenyan smallholders, or a philanthropy that is looking to support the farmer livelihoods, and you believe a combination of digital technologies and rural entrepreneurial agents is the way to achieve outstanding impact, I want to hear from you.

🌾 Climate-smart agriculture technologies have the potential to increase farmers' resilience to climate change. Learn more on how the Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project and partners are helping 35,000 women farmers in Mali get better access to the kind of finance that enables them to use and adopt CSA innovations 👉🏾 https://lnkd.in/dNEB6hte #FoodSecurity Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture